a family might live comfortably with 18,000 dollars in addition; not with less than that sum, nor with so little, if there were boarding-school expenses to pay, or any charges except those strictly domestic. Now let us suppose that Mr. Birkbeck had settled there :-his family, except as regards society, would scarcely have been conscious that they were transplanted: he would have felt at home in a cultivated country, instead of a novice in the prairies, and his agricultural skill might have been profitably exerted in a congenial sphere: 30,000 dollars, out of the 35,000 which he is said to have brought with him, would have been disposed of in a form at least as convertible as at present. I much doubt whether his whole property, at the end of ten years, including the 5,000 dollars left to accumulate with compound interest, would not have been of more value than it will now prove, and have commanded as many cultivated and uncleared acres in Illinois, as he will possess at the expiration of that period. If he should not be benefited, or be only partially so, by the remissions of price proposed by the Government to be afforded to purchasers of public lands, (which will depend on the state of his instalments,) or if his settlement continue unpopular, he may actually lose by his lands, the reduction from one and a quarter to two dollars by the Government for vacant lands, of course reducing the value of those he has entered. This, however, is a speculation for which I have no sufficient data; but I was led to think a little on the subject on passing these fine Pennsylvania farms. It ap

pears to me that the "aliquid immensum infinitumque," which played round the youthful imagination of Cicero, and conducted that celebrated orator into regions of truth and beauty, had taken possession of the mind of Mr. Birkbeck, and led him, less courteously, into the prairies of Illinois, where I have no doubt it has long since vanished, like an ignis fatuus, leaving the agriculturalist not a little mortified at having been beguiled by an insidious phantom, which beckoned him to fame and fortune in the Western wilds.

We reached Philadelphia, 60 miles from Lancaster, at four o'clock in the afternoon, and found our party at the boarding house increased by the arrival of a gentleman and lady and three daughters from Lexington, Kentucky, who having hastily left a comfortable estate in the vicinity of London, had become tired of the Western wilderness, and had returned to the Atlantic States, beginning to think that, to persons in their easy circumstances at least, there was no place like old England after all.

LETTER VI.

New-York, Feb. 1821.

A LONGER residence in the principalities of the United States, and a more intimate acquaintance with their inhabitants, have given me a better opportunity than I had previously enjoyed, of forming the estimate you request from me of the present state of religion and morals on this side of the

Atlantic. You must, however, make great allowance for errors in so difficult and delicate an undertaking, and will receive with peculiar caution, on such a subject, any general conclusions deduced from the observations of an individual traveller. You may, however, consider the favourable representations which I made, in a letter from Boston last autumn, with respect to opportunities of public worship, and the prevalence of evangelical preaching, as applicable to all the principal towns and cities from Portland to Savannah.

But churches are not religion; nor are the ministrations of a pastor an unerring criterion of the piety of his hearers. In a country, however, in which contributions to places of public worship are for the most part voluntary, a liberal dissemination of sacred edifices is a very favourable symptom; while the number of faithful ministers, and the frequent occurrence of large congregations listening attentively to unwelcome truths from pastors appointed by their own election, and dependent on them for support, afford something more than a vague presumption of the existence of no inconsiderable degree of vital piety in the community.

My favourable impressions were strengthened as I proceeded, by noticing the attention generally paid on the Atlantic coast to the external observance of the Sabbath; by meeting continually with Bibles, and other religious books, in the steamboats and houses of entertainment; and by witnessing the efforts every where apparent for the extension of Christian piety.

Theological institutions for the education of ministers, extensive, well-endowed, and respectable, frequently arrest the attention of the traveller as he passes along the road; while a very little intercourse with society convinces him that associations of a more private nature, for preparing indigent young men for missionary services, together with Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, and Sunday School and Tract Societies, are liberally scattered.

I felt neither disposed nor called upon to deprive myself of the pleasure I derived from these favourable indications, by reflecting that they. were no accurate measure of the degree in which personal religion prevails. I was quite aware that, in many cases, and especially where there is no establishment, churches are sometimes multiplied by the very dissentions of a congregation; that a proportion of the active effort engaged in the promotion of religious objects, is often very little connected with Christian principle; and that respect for the form of godliness may survive its power. But at the same time I felt persuaded that, although a love of popularity may enrol the worldly in the list of contributors to religious societies, or engage them as public advocates in a sacred cause, still that diligent performance of the routine of official duties, and those self-denying and persevering efforts, to which religious societies are usually indebted both for their origin and prosperity, imply, in most cases, the existence of a higher principle, and spring from a purer

source.

My subsequent experience has convinced me that I was not incorrect in the persuasion in which I indulged myself as I passed along, that I was always in the vicinity of some at least who were united in Christian sympathy with the whole church militant on earth, and were travelling to a better country amidst the hopes and fears, the trials and consolations, which chequer the lot and form the character of the Christian in every quarter of the globe. Sometimes, in the course of my route, some little incident would give peculiar force to this persuasion, or the surrounding scenery impart to it a particular interest.

On my return from Canada through Vermont and New Hampshire, I visited the Theological Institution at Andover; where the handsome collegiate edifice, the spacious grounds, the houses of the professors, and the excellent inn in some degree attached to the establishment, bore as am ple testimony to the munificence, as the object of the institution to the piety, of its founders. It is from this establishment that the American Board of Missions has drawn nearly all its labourers. After tea we adjourned to the college chapel, where religious intelligence from various parts of the United States was communicated by the students or professors. We had then prayers, after which we separated. It was a beautiful star-light night in autumn; and while looking out of my window, at midnight, on this quiet scene-where many who were then labouring in distant regions of the globe first felt those ardent aspirings after extensive future usefulness, which prompted them